'Girl in Blue' finally gets gravestone

This week, when Willoughby Cemetery Sexton Alan Lemieux takes his walk through the cemetery grounds, he will stop and pick up the dimes and pennies visitors have left at the grave that sits under the cemetery's only mulberry tree.

For more than 70 years, the grave, on the left side of the center section of the cemetery, has read simply: "Girl in Blue. Killed By Train. December 24, 1933. Unknown, But Not Forgotten."

The "Girl In Blue" now has an additional headstone, stating her name - Josephine Klimczak.

The headstone was donated recently by Kotecki Monuments of Cleveland.

After leaving a boarding house on Third Street in Willoughby on Christmas Eve morning, the 22-year-old Klimczak was killed by a New York Central passenger train near where Industrial Parkway is today.

Two days earlier, she had been kicked off a streetcar in Kirtland, after failing to pay her fare.

The only clue to Klimczak's identity was in the purse she was carrying, which contained 90 cents and a railroad ticket to Corry, Pa.

Because she was wearing a blue woolen dress and blue shoes, she was from then on known as "The Girl in Blue."

Her body was taken to the former Jim McMahon Funeral Home, where she was laid out for two weeks.

More than 3,000 residents visited to pay their respects and see if they could identify her.

Willoughby residents raised $60 for a headstone, and the Girl in Blue was laid to rest in Willoughby Cemetery in a plot donated by a resident.

An additional $15 was placed in a city fund to ensure geraniums would be placed on the grave once a year.

Although most historians agreed the girl's name was "Sophie," her last name was the center of debate for 60 years.

In December 1993, the mystery was solved when The News-Herald published an article marking the anniversary of the Girl in Blue's death.

The article also ran in the Corry Evening Journal in Corry, Pa.

The article was read by Pennsylvania real-estate agent Ed Sekerak, who was involved in selling the former Klimczak family farm in Spring Creek at the time.

Sekerak discovered through court records that the mystery girl was Josephine Klimczak.

Upon learning that Sekerak could confirm the identity of the Girl in Blue, Willoughby lawyer William C. Gargiulo came forward and asked that Lake County Probate Court Judge Fred V. Skok officially recognize the true identity of the girl.

Gargiulo approached the McMahon-Coyne Funeral Home in 1993 to see if a fund could be established to buy an additional tombstone listing the girl's

true identity.

Kotecki Monuments offered to donate a small tombstone but money was never collected, and the additional tombstone was never put on her grave.

Ed Kotecki of Kotecki Monuments is retired.

When The News-Herald ran a story revisiting the Girl In Blue in 2002, his son, Ed Kotecki IV, who now runs the company, said he would still be willing to donate a tombstone.

Willoughby Mayor David E. Anderson is grateful to Kotecki for donating the stone.

"Once we became comfortable with who the person was, it was certainly appropriate to put the stone there with her name on it," Anderson said.

Both Anderson and Lemieux had insisted that the original stone be left intact.

"That's certainly appropriate so people know who the Girl In Blue is and the story behind it," Anderson said.

Lemieux, who has been the cemetery sexton for 14 years, uses the change that people often leave on the grave to purchase decorations for it.